Hospital pharmacies often manage groups of medical items in the form of pharmacy kits. A pharmacy kit can be used, for instance, to provide a group of items for a specific medical procedure, a particular physician, or a designated location of a hospital. As an example, a pharmacy kit can be used to aggregate and transport a collection of medicines for treating a patient with a specific type of stroke, heart condition, or other ailment.
A pharmacy kit (or “kit”) typically comprises a group of items specified by a template. For example, the template may specify that the kit requires three vials of adenosine, two containers of albuterol solution, two vials of amiodarone, and so on. The template may also specify ways in which individual items may be satisfied. For example, it may specify that the vials of adenosine may be satisfied by certain product brands. Pharmacy kits are usually stocked by a hospital pharmacy, but they may be stocked by another entity, such as an outsourced kit stocking company.
Local board-of-pharmacy regulations (e.g., state regulations) typically allow a hospital or other facility to define the contents of its kits. In other words, they allow the hospital to create its own templates. These regulations, however, also require that the hospital adhere to a template once defined. This typically requires specific procedures to ensure accuracy of kit contents. Such procedures can include, for instance, regulated kit creation and inventory procedures, and prescribed monitoring and/or update procedures. The following are examples of such procedures as used in certain conventional contexts.
A kit is typically created by receiving specified items in a pharmacy, manually recording (e.g., on paper and/or electronic records) their product identifiers (e.g., National Drug Code (NDC) or Universal Product Code (UPC)), lot numbers, and expiration dates, and then loading the items into a container, such as a box, tray, or canister. During the kit's lifetime, it may be updated periodically to replace expired or consumed items. These updates are typically performed by manually inspecting the kit, comparing it to a corresponding template, modifying kit contents as required, and then manually recording any changes.
Unfortunately, the above procedures tend to suffer from significant shortcomings. For instance, the manual recording of item information is generally time consuming and error prone, which drives up the cost of creating and updating the kits. Moreover, these procedures are usually performed by highly trained pharmacy staff, which may be an inefficient use of their time. Manual inspections for missing, expired, or soon-to-be expired items can also be time consuming and error prone, particularly because item expiration dates tend to vary between different products within the same kit.
Due to the above and other shortcomings, there is a general need for improved techniques and technologies for managing pharmacy kits.